When learning to play a musical keyboard instrument, for example a piano, organ, synthesizer or similar, conventional tuition techniques require a student to learn a traditional musical notation system, wherein one or more dots disposed on a five-line staff are employed to represent notes. Such conventional tuition techniques can often take any months to master, because there is necessitated learning of an abstract form of notation, namely utilizing filled or unfilled circles on a staff, quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes, etc., wherein each note has to be translated via a player's mind into one or more actions to depress corresponding keys on a keyboard of a musical instrument; only after the student has begun to master the abstract form of notation, can significant enjoyment be derived from playing the musical instrument. As a result, many children students find aforesaid tuition boring, and many adult students excuse themselves by alleging that they are too old to learn.
Known methods of teaching musical notation are based on notation that relates to a fixed pitch regime, known as “absolute pitch”, on a keyboard. Moreover, the notation does not easily allow students to transpose songs to play in different keys of a chromatic musical scale. Such transposition is found to be essential if a musician playing upon a keyboard is to accompany one or more singers having different vocal ranges, for example accompanying a choir or group of singers at a party. Mastering such transposition necessitates the musician learning a variety of different musical keys and various sharps (-#) and flats (-b) of a chromatic musical scale; learning such sharps and flats potentially further complicates the learning process for students.
Known methods of teaching musical notation to students are based, as aforementioned, on a system of musical notation which relates to a fixed pitch, known as “absolute pitch”, on the keyboard, wherein traditional notation specifies a particular “musical scale”, which prevents the student from choosing a scale which most suits his/her needs. Novice students may prefer to play all songs in a single scale, for example a single scale based on a musical chromatic note C, which is often considered to be an easiest scale to play, because the scale of C uses, for harmonization in major mode, all white notes and no black keys of a keyboard, thus rendering it easier for students to learn the scale of C. If traditional notation for a particular song does not happen to be printed in the scale of C, then the student is forced to learn a totally new scale, which will involve learning a different pattern of white and black keys of a keyboard; such new scales may be unfamiliar to the students and makes it slower for them to learn songs. On a conventional keyboard, there are twelve different major scales, which force a student to learn, if not all, the twelve scales. Such learning represents a significant cognitive barrier to any student who simply wishes to learn to play songs in a quickest possible time.
Traditional known musical notation is often of a complex nature, which results in many performers not being able to memorize musical pieces, and often feel that they need a copy of the musical notation when playing, namely a musical score, to enable them to perform, thus denying the performer with an opportunity of impromptu performances and “sing-alongs”, where various members of an audience sing along with the music being played, namely a situation which often pertains at parties and other similar social gatherings.
A fundamental building block of contemporary songs is “chords” which are predefined patterns of three of more mutually different notes used in the aforesaid traditional musical notation. Moreover, a major disadvantage of traditional musical notation is that it is unable to represent chords, except by explicitly defining corresponding notes of the chords, which at least triples an amount of musical note representation that the student has to read, making it substantially slower to learn than a pattern-based notation method. In addition, it is found that a majority of popular music comprises a maximum of six mutually different chords, and many popular songs only use four mutually different chords per song, for example configured and repeated in various ways to support a tune, namely melody. As traditional musical notation is unable to represent chords, other than explicitly defining notes constituting the chords, it is highly desirable to transcode a large quantity of individual notes into a handful of simple recurring patterns to lessen mental processing strain on the student when performing musical pieces.
Traditional musical notation requires that all notes that are to be played are explicitly defined in the notation, meaning that a particular piece of notation has a fixed minimum level of musical skill required for its rendition. Thus, if the notation is aimed at a moderately skilled player, a learner student is likely to struggle with the notation and a proficient player is likely to be dissatisfied with the simplicity of the notation. Presently, a student who has learnt a song as a novice, and then wants to play the same song at a more proficient level, is obliged to buy a different musical arrangement of the song, namely to purchase a more advance musical notation for the song.
In a published Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent application no. WO 02/09087A1 (PCT/GB01/03352; applicant—Renham; “Musical Instrument and Musical Notation therefore”), there is described a standard musical instrument, such as a piano, which has a keyboard including a plurality of keys which can be depressed by a player when playing a piece of music upon the keyboard. The keyboard has accidental notes which are colored such that a same note on each octave of the keyboard is of a mutually similar color, for example a C-sharp key (C-# key), namely D-flat key (D-b key), is mutually similar color for all octaves of the keyboard. Such a musical instrument can be played in conjunction with a standard musical notation in which all the accidental notes are colored in the notation so as to correspond with the equivalent keys of the keyboard of the musical instrument.